Sharing insights into the activities of MERL staff, volunteers and visitors during a period of change and transformation…

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Monthly Archives: June 2014

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You can find full details of all our forthcoming events in our What’s On guide, which are now available from the Museum or to download from our website You can also see all events on our online calendar

MERL Seminar series: The Great War & the countryside
Eggs Enlisted? Egg production and the impact of warby Dr Nicola Verdon, Reader in Modern British History, Sheffield Hallam University
Tuesday 1st July, 1-2pm
Free. Drop-in / registerWhy not take the opportunity to see the Reading University College: WW1 & beyond display at the same time. (See below)Click here for details of the full seminar programme

Toddler timeFriday 4th July, 10-11am
£2 per child, drop-in
Suitable for families with children aged 2-4Come along to the Museum with your little ones and enjoy rhymes, songs and craft activities. This week we will be painting with corks!

Exhibitions

Reading University College: WW1 and beyond
Tuesday 1st April to 31 August, 2014
Staircase hall, MERL
Free, drop-in, normal museum opening timesFunded by Arts Council England as part of the Reading Connections project, and inspired by the University of Reading Memorial Book and Clock Tower memorial, this exhibition reveals the stories of the men and women with connections to the then Reading University College, who fell during the First World War. The exhibition also looks at the theme of War in a broader sense with interesting items from MERL and the Special Collections relating to other conflicts.Part of our WW1 programme

Collecting the countryside: 20th century rural culturesUntil Autumn 2014Temporary exhibition space
Free, drop in, normal museum opening timesSince 2008 the Museum of English Rural Life has been adding even more objects to its collection, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Collecting Cultures programme, in order to represent each decade of the last century. (Find out more in Curator, Isabel Hughes’ recent post) This exhibition gives a taste of what has been acquired and challenges visitors to suggest the modern-day objects that the Museum needs to collect for the future. The exhibition will help the Museum to explore how to incorporate more recent histories and representations of the English countryside into its displays as part of the new Our Country Lives project.

We are all very pleased and excited to announce that we have been successful in securing a further £1.7m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, in order to redevelop MERL as part of the Our Country Lives project! You can see our press release here.

As it was #MusCake day this week as well, we thought we’d celebrate with an Our Country Lives themed cake.

That we have got to this stage is testament to the huge amount of work we’ve already done in reviewing what we as a Museum stand for, and our plan for how we can best tell the story of English rural life to our visitors. One of the main reasons for redeveloping MERL is that we’re aware that there is a new generation of visitors who need different ways of engaging with our rural heritage through new, themed displays, innovative interpretation and an exciting programme of activities. The galleries will be more engaging for adults and children alike, with things to interact with in the galleries, handling opportunities and far more digital interpretation of the collections, which will display the incredible depth and variety of our Archives, including film and photography.

Visitor evaluation – as it should – has played a big part in directing our work. The majority of our visitors do not live in the countryside, so we aim to reveal the relevance of the countryside to those whose lives have been spent in towns and cities. However, just because someone lives in the city obviously doesn’t mean they don’t have experience of or are entirely unaware of the countryside. As such, we will be exploring various popular themes such as craft and craftspeople, how we view and perceive the countryside, and invite our visitors to tell us what they think of contemporary issues, such as climate change, food security and the relationship between town and country. We will also be focusing far more on the people, past and present, who make up the countryside, and what their stories can tell us about our continuing countryside story.

Staff and volunteers celebrated the news yesterday.

There is almost too much to tell you about in this one blog post – for instance, we’re uncovering displays unseen since the ‘50s (such as our amazing Festival of Britain wall hangings – see below), building a new gallery, creating new spaces for learning and exploring our collections digitally, embarking on an exciting three year programme of new events and activities – the list could go on (and does so here). For now, we’ve taken a breather to celebrate with cake and to take a month or so to make all the preparations necessary to start on the project proper.

One of the best ways to keep up with progress on the project will be this blog, but we’re also working on various other ways you can see what we’re doing behind the scenes, and what you can expect in the new MERL. We would also like to say thank you to all of those who have helped us get this far in the project: MERL staff, our funders, our consultants GuM and Cultural Consulting, the University of Reading, and of course our fabulous volunteers.

One of Michael O’Connell’s 1951 wall hangings will feature in the new MERL.

You can find full details of all our forthcoming events in our What’s On guide, which are now available from the Museum or to download from our website You can also see all events on our online calendar

MERL Seminar series: The Great War & the countryside
Food, diet and consumption on the Home Front: standards of living amongst rural households during the First World Warby Dr Nicola Verdon, Reader in Modern British History, Sheffield Hallam University
Tuesday 24th June, 1-2pm
Free. Drop-in / registerWhy not take the opportunity to see the Reading University College: WW1 & beyond display at the same time. (See below)Click here for details of the full seminar programme

Rural Reads book club
Thurs 26th June, 5.30-7pm
Free, drop-in
Join us for an informal discussion of this month’s book, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen.

Toddler timeFriday 27th June, 10-11am
£2 per child, drop-in
Suitable for families with children aged 2-4Come along to the Museum with your little ones and enjoy rhymes, songs and craft activities.

Exhibitions

Reading University College: WW1 and beyond
Tuesday 1st April to 31 August, 2014
Staircase hall, MERL
Free, drop-in, normal museum opening timesFunded by Arts Council England as part of the Reading Connections project, and inspired by the University of Reading Memorial Book and Clock Tower memorial, this exhibition reveals the stories of the men and women with connections to the then Reading University College, who fell during the First World War. The exhibition also looks at the theme of War in a broader sense with interesting items from MERL and the SPecial Collections relating to other conflicts.Part of our WW1 programme

Collecting the countryside: 20th century rural culturesUntil Autumn 2014Temporary exhibition space
Free, drop in, normal museum opening timesSince 2008 the Museum of English Rural Life has been adding even more objects to its collection, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Collecting Cultures programme, in order to represent each decade of the last century. (Find out more in Curator, Isabel Hughes’ recent post) This exhibition gives a taste of what has been acquired and challenges visitors to suggest the modern-day objects that the Museum needs to collect for the future. The exhibition will help the Museum to explore how to incorporate more recent histories and representations of the English countryside into its displays as part of the new Our Country Lives project.

MERL, along with academic colleagues at the University of Reading, has contributed to a documentary film made by a middle school student for the US National History Day. The film, entitled “Operation Pied Piper: Balancing Parental Rights and Government Responsibility”, drew on the Evacuee Archive, the Humphrey Fisher Archive and also featured interviews with Dr Jacqui Turner (History) and Dr Martin Parsons (retired from the Institute of Education, who founded the Evacuee Archive).

We are proud to announce that student Hayley Hocking achieved fourth place overall in the Junior Individual Documentary category and won the California State prize for an outstanding entry. Everyone at MERL would like to congratulate Hayley, who is a student at the Frank Augustus Miller Middle School in Riverside on her achievement. President Obama attended the awards ceremony.

US National History Day aims to “make history come alive for students by engaging them in the discovery of the historical, cultural and social experiences of the past. Through hands-on experiences and presentations, today’s kids are better able to inform the present and shape the future.” For more details see the National History Day website.

The Evacuee Archive at MERL contains written memoirs, oral history interviews and some research material relating to former evacuees and war-children gathered by the Research Centre for Evacuee and War Child Studies at the University of Reading. The collection mainly relates to evacuation schemes within Britain and the British children who were sent overseas to Canada, the USA, South Africa, and Australasia during the Second World War. Operation Pied Piper (the evacuation of children from British cities) was the most prominent of these operations. For more details see this link.

You can find full details of all our forthcoming events and activities in our What’s On and MERL Families guides, which are now available from the Museum or to download from our website You can also see all events on our online calendar

MERL Seminar series: The Great War & the countryside
‘Be you Berkshire?’ The Berkshire Yeomanry during the First World Warby Captain Andrew French, Assistnat Honorary Curator, Berkshire Yeomanry Museum
Tuesday 17th June, 1-2pm
Free. Drop-in / registerWhy not take the opportunity to see the Reading University College: WW1 & beyond display at the same time. (See below)Click here for details of the full seminar programme

Toddler timeFriday 20th June, 10-11am,
£2 per child, drop-in
Suitable for families with children aged 2-4Come along to the Museum with your little ones and enjoy rhymes, songs and craft activities.

Basket making demonstrations
Saturday 21st June, 2-3pm
Free, drop-in
As part of the Basketmakers’ Association Summer Meeting taking place at MERL on Saturday there will be demonstrations for visitors of various basket making techniques, including rush chair seating.

Exhibitions

Reading University College: WW1 and beyond
Tuesday 1st April to 31 August, 2014
Staircase hall, MERL
Free, drop-in, normal museum opening timesFunded by Arts Council England as part of the Reading Connections project, and inspired by the University of Reading Memorial Book and Clock Tower memorial, this exhibition reveals the stories of the men and women with connections to the then Reading University College, who fell during the First World War. The exhibition also looks at the theme of War in a broader sense with interesting items from MERL and the SPecial Collections relating to other conflicts.Part of our WW1 programme

Collecting the countryside: 20th century rural culturesUntil Autumn 2014Temporary exhibition space
Free, drop in, normal museum opening timesSince 2008 the Museum of English Rural Life has been adding even more objects to its collection, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Collecting Cultures programme, in order to represent each decade of the last century. (Find out more in Curator, Isabel Hughes’ recent post) This exhibition gives a taste of what has been acquired and challenges visitors to suggest the modern-day objects that the Museum needs to collect for the future. The exhibition will help the Museum to explore how to incorporate more recent histories and representations of the English countryside into its displays as part of the new Our Country Lives project.

Since last week was National Volunteering Week, I thought it would be worth dwelling on the volunteering opportunities for this week’s update. Volunteers play a massive part in the operation of MERL, from staffing events to carrying out vital work on the conservation of objects, cataloguing archives and welcoming visitors on the front desk (see Rob’s post for more on why we love our volunteers).

A lot of our Mezzanine objects are going to have to be moved around later this year (Click the picture to see it move!).

Volunteers, of course, come from many walks of life and give up their time in museums for different reasons. Some volunteer as a way to build up their experience in the hope of one day working in a museum for money, a position I was in only a year ago. Others volunteer to meet people, to fill their days, or simply because they have a passion for our collections or subject matter.

Volunteers played a huge role in our recent Summer Fete.

We will hear in the next couple of weeks whether our HLF bid has been successful, and if so we are especially going to need the help of our volunteers, both old and new. It will be a unique volunteering experience as it means having a hand in a major Heritage Lottery Fund project, which is going to change the face of MERL and how we do things. If the project goes ahead then we will have to close for building work, but during this period we are going to need many able hands to help move our objects around the Museum, erect dust protection, deconstruct the current displays, record where every object has been moved to, as well as ensure nothing has been missed or broken. Later in the project we will also need help putting all of the objects back, erect the new displays, research the collections and catalogue objects and archives which will be displayed in the new Museum. We also have a range of exciting new projects for which we really want your help both setting up and being involved in (more on these in a later update!).

In conclusion, we will need all the help we can get, and we are dedicated to helping our volunteers get what they want from us. We will be putting out a proper call for what we need nearer to when we close the Museum, but until then please keep checking in on the blog for more on what Our Country Lives will be about.

You can find full details of all our forthcoming events and activities in our What’s On and MERL Families guides, which are now available from the Museum or to download from our website You can also see all events on our online calendar

Universities Week 2014Research in Action: Buckets , baskets and boots: Sensory Objects showcase
Monday 9th June, 12.30-3pm, free, drop-in
Reading Colleage Learners with Learning Difficulties, researchers from the University of Reading and the Rix Centre at the University of East London present their research into interactive sensory objects: creating alternative forms of museum interpretation. Come along and explore MERL though your senses using Interactive Sensory Objects. For full details visit Universities Week events

MERL Seminar series: The Great War & the countryside
Open spaces after the Great War: remembrance, recreation and reafforestationby Professor Keith Grieves, Professor of History and Education, Kingston University
Tuesday 10th June, 1-2pm
Free. Drop-in / registerWhy not take the opportunity to see the Reading University College: WW1 & beyond display at the same time. (See below)Click here for details of the full seminar programme

Universities Week 2014Research showcase: the creative industries
Wednesday 11th June, 12.30-7pm, free, drop-in (with some bookable sessions)
This event will showcase how the University of Reading’s world-leading research feeds into the UK’s creative economy, with emphasis on theatre and film. A small exhibition of key items from the University’s collections that support creative industries research – including the iconic manuscript for Samuel Beckett’s first novel, Murphy; and a film showing of a creative response to the University’s Evacuee Archive.
For full details visit Universities Week events

Toddler timeFriday 13th June, 10-11am,
£2 per child, drop-in
Suitable for families with children aged 2-4Come along to the Museum with your little ones and enjoy rhymes, songs and craft activities.

Whiteknights Studio Trail
Saturday 14th & Sunday 15th June, 11am to 6pm, free, drop-in
MERL is hosting artists in the Museum and garden again this year, featuring ceramics, woodwork and scultpture. Visitors are also welcome to take a break to enjoy tea & cake in our pop-up cafe or to picnic in our garden. For details of the artists we’re hosting, and the rest of the trail, visit www.studiotrail.co.uk

Exhibitions

Reading University College: WW1 and beyond
Tuesday 1st April to 31 August, 2014
Staircase hall, MERL
Free, drop-in, normal museum opening timesFunded by Arts Council England as part of the Reading Connections project, and inspired by the University of Reading Memorial Book and Clock Tower memorial, this exhibition reveals the stories of the men and women with connections to the then Reading University College, who fell during the First World War. The exhibition also looks at the theme of War in a broader sense with interesting items from MERL and the SPecial Collections relating to other conflicts.Part of our WW1 programme

Collecting the countryside: 20th century rural culturesUntil Autumn 2014Temporary exhibition space
Free, drop in, normal museum opening timesSince 2008 the Museum of English Rural Life has been adding even more objects to its collection, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Collecting Cultures programme, in order to represent each decade of the last century. (Find out more in Curator, Isabel Hughes’ recent post) This exhibition gives a taste of what has been acquired and challenges visitors to suggest the modern-day objects that the Museum needs to collect for the future. The exhibition will help the Museum to explore how to incorporate more recent histories and representations of the English countryside into its displays as part of the new Our Country Lives project.

This week is the time of the year we stop to think about and celebrate volunteering across the country, whether you are a volunteer yourself, an organisation who works with them, or indeed is entirely run by volunteers, this is the week in which we say thank you on a national scale.

Throughout the University Museums and Special Collections Services we have about 120 volunteers who regularly give up their time to support us. Without them we would struggle to complete major archive projects on time, we wouldn’t be able to deliver major events and our output would be significantly smaller. I am extremely lucky that my role is completely focused on our volunteers as it means I get to work with a wide variety of people, I learn about a myriad of projects and I am never sitting still.

Here are all the reasons I love volunteers:

I love volunteers because they are passionate and want to be here. Sometimes, during a wet Monday morning, work can be the least exciting place but when our volunteers walk through the door they instantly cheer the place up. Their warmth and cheeriness inevitably rubs off on to us.

I love volunteers because I get to meet and work with a variety of people from across the local community, such as students, people looking for work, people with a special interest or people who have retired. Everyone volunteers for a different reason and I think it is great that we as an organisation can offer so many diverse opportunities, from gardening to archiving.

I love volunteers because without them we wouldn’t be able to deliver nearly as much as we do. Volunteers help us deliver large projects, helping as teams on our archive projects such as the Macmillan and Longman project. Volunteers also provide valuable support on the front desk welcoming visitors and helping out on the shop. The visitor experience is also enhanced through our volunteers, as they can go on a tour with a volunteer tour guide and learn more about the collections and see behind the scenes.

I love volunteers because they bring so much to an organisation. Not only do they bring time but they bring a wealth of knowledge and experience which benefits us. Whether this is through knowledge of a particular collection, experience of marketing or managing, or even being a dab hand at knitting, everything a volunteer contributes strengthens us.

Our volunteer, Jan, knits sheep for our shop, and also knitted wigs for the judge in our recent (vounteers’) production about the Swing riots